The Ghost of Christmas that Should Have Been

On Ebenezer Scrooge’s fateful Christmas Eve, he was visited by three spirits, and they changed his life forever. The Spirits are familiar to all of us who’ve read Dickens’ book, or watched the many iterations of “Scrooge.” (My personal favorite is the 1951 version with Alastair Sim, considered by most, to be the best ever done)

They are the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghosts of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future.

Each Christmas I find myself caught up under the spell of these three “spirits” in the form of memories, current plans, and hopes for what might one day be. But there is another Ghost I have come to recognize at Christmas. He’s a sad Ghost and He doesn’t appear to everybody, saving his hauntings only for those with regret, sorrow, or sadness at Christmas. He is the “Ghost of Christmas That Should Have Been.” He might be the most frightening of all Christmas Spirits.

He started haunting me 18 years ago, when I first got divorced. Instead of showing me shadows of what was, or what is now, or what might one day be, he taunts me with what was supposed to have been. He shows me flashes and glimpses of the Christmases I longed to spend, with the family I dreamed of having, in the home I wanted to build.

His hauntings were muffled and muted for many years, by the magic in my daughter’s eyes. When she was little, and Christmas was still very much a wonder and a spectacle and when it held its childhood excited mystery for her…this ghost was forced into the shadows. I was busy being happy with her, and because of her, and her happiness, and childish innocence banished him to the fringes.

Once in a while, he would step out of the shadows and whisper in my ear: “This isn’t how it was supposed to be” and I would feel the pain shoot through my heart. But my daughter would be smiling and I would quickly cast him aside with “But how it is right now is very good…” and he would go back into hiding. I thought maybe I’d banished him but apparently, he was just biding his time. He knew the day would come when I’d be vulnerable to his attacks and so he waited.

In recent years, he’s been more visible, more vocal, more daring in his attacks. This year…he’s been downright confrontational, right in my face, too close for me to look away. He reminds me of what my Christmas dreams were, and how far from those dreams I find myself.

He shows me visions of the wife I was supposed to have. A wife who would remain and not give up. A wife with whom I had, by this time, built a lifetime of memories with, and who knew me as I knew her. We shared knowing smiles and funny Christmas stories and we hosted parties with those we loved. She was supposed to be my best friend. She was supposed to know me better than anyone ever knew me. She was supposed to have made me better, and softened my toughness, and smoothed out my rough edges. She cheered each victory and comforted each loss, and I returned the favor in kind.

But she never showed up. Not in the 18 years that have come and gone since my divorce. She was never there to wake up to at Christmas, with impatient children knocking at our bedroom door, begging us to get up and get Christmas underway. She was never there to sneak away with and do our secret Santa buying. She never found me and all the romantic, wonderful, thoughtful gifts I would have picked out for her if only somehow, she’d appeared.

But she didn’t. She never became my best friend and knew me well enough to buy the exact, perfect present for me. I never got to unwrap a gift and be overwhelmed by just how much thought must have gone into it, and how perfect it was for me, and how she really had to know me to have seen this perfect thing in a storefront window and thought, “Craig would just love this”

She never laid in bed next to me, wishing it were Christmas morning so she could take this perfect present from its hiding spot and watch me unwrap it. She never showed up and so I have not had the experience of ever having had a perfect gift from a wife who loved me.

This ghost shows me the family I was supposed to have had. The other children. The in laws and out laws and cousins and friends who would come and go throughout the holidays, never wanting to miss time at our house. Relationships would develop and remain. Life would seem impossible without certain of these faces at our table, in our home, and in our hearts. The sort of friendships and relationships that only come from family. The kind that can never include a single man.

There was supposed to be Christmas mornings where my daughter woke to find both her parents there…not one or the other. Short of this, should have been a woman who loved her dad, and loved her as well, so that she’d have the feeling of family at Christmas, even if it was a blend.

There was supposed to be love, and memories, and excitement, and family.

But none of this ever happened and I wonder now, at this point in life, whether it ever will. I wonder if I will ever feel enough excitement about another person to want to share  my life with them. I wonder if I will ever be so loved by another that she’ll go out in search of that perfect gift, and not rest until she finds it, and be excited when she does.

I wonder if my daughter will ever see her dad in love, and see how he does this, and see a woman love him deeply. (She was only 18 months old when her mom and I divorced, so she has no knowledge of what this would look like.)

I wonder if Christmas will ever be what I dream of it being, and what I hoped it would be, now that the wonderful distraction of my daughter as a child has passed.

As a boy, I dreamed of being a parent one day and what kind of Christmas I would have for my family. Perhaps it was there that this particular Ghost of Christmas was born. Perhaps, in reality, he is a monster of my own making. I have always loved Christmas and held a high standard and a romantic notion that could have only been accomplished by a true couple…not by a single man, doing his best to raise a daughter alone.

And so, in that fertile ground, he grew, and on that fertile ground he plants his seeds of regret, disappointment, doubt, and longing. He has never ruined Christmas for me…for I am too much of a hopeless romantic and sentimentalist at Christmas for him to ever take it from me completely. But he has damaged its glow and dimmed its star. This Christmas in particular, has been hard on me in ways I’ve never experienced before.

I need to exorcise this ghost or surrender to his haunting. But I don’t know how to do either. And so, I do nothing. Nothing but enjoy Christmas as I can, and –in my quiet moments—look at his taunting and teasing with honest regret.

Of all the Ghosts of Christmas, he is the most sinister, and the one I am most powerless against.

Christmas is six days away. I have to find a way to silence this ghost before then.

Advent Day 10: Where is Jesus?

I haven’t written in two days. I almost didn’t bother today either. This Christmas season has been flat for me and I only know part of the reason.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll delve into the other reasons but todays reflections are about Jesus. Or where is He?

The Bible tells us the wise men came from the East in response to the star and to their knowledge of Scriptures. They came looking for this King that star and the old writings foretold.

I guess this Christmas has me looking for Him too.

I’m flat. My Faith is flat. My past is so tangled and damaged by failures and those failures ate up so much time, that I can’t seem to get a jumpstart on the future. I feel like I’m going through the motions every day, checking my own wrist to feel for a pulse. Looking for signs of life on the terrain that represents the remains of my days on Earth.

Nothing about this point in life even vaguely resembles the picture I’d always had in my head. Nothing. The shapes, the faces, the sounds, the backdrop…none of it is what I thought it would be.

In the midst of this, I find myself exasperated by the Faith I’ve claimed for literally more than 80% of my entire life. Where is Jesus? Where is the baby, born King of Kings and Lord of Lords? All I see anymore are His self-appointed deputies, the Santa’s Helpers of the Christian world, controlling the community of Faith and setting the rules for believers. I can’t get past all their faces and all their individual screaming for attention and clamoring for fame, to see Jesus’ face. I can’t hear His voice over their caterwauling and shrill demands for adoration. This gang of skinny-jean-befitted posers who’ve not spent one long, arduous night in prayer. These Flockstars who care more that you put them in a Five-star hotel than they do for the people you brought them in to preach to.

Just as complicit in the secreting of Jesus are the publishing house presidents and the Christian Music label leadership who decide that terrible stories get told and dreadful music gets made and they care not a whit whether it actually ministers to anyone…it’s all about the bottom line.

They all stand there, blocking access to the baby in the dirty sheep trough. The catch their reflection in a mirror as they lisp: “None shall pass!”

Where is Jesus?

Where is the baby who came from Heaven for me? Where is He and what does He want from me? Why does He bless and prosper those charlatans and ignore others with some small measure of talent and a heart that aches in the night for a chance. A chance to tell their story…and His story.

I spent all this year trying to find my way back to this stable and when I got there…they’d stolen Him. I find myself so discouraged this year.

I have tried…dear Jesus I have tried to find you! I started watching my favorite Christmas movies two weeks sooner. I started listening to Christmas music sooner, I decorated sooner. I read. I wrote. But I feel like Christmas is in shambles. Like my little Nativity set is barren…the baby Jesus is missing from his manger.

I feel like I woke up in someone else’s house on Christmas morning, in someone else’s Christmas. On some other planet.

Maybe that’s why I –why we—get so sentimental at Christmas. Because each year removes us farther from the Christmas in our hearts. From the Jesus of that Christmas in our hearts. And we just want to get back.

I do.

I want to find that Jesus again. Before this Christmas is possible.

Jesus…where are you?

Advent Day 7: A Single Dad at Christmas

I write a lot about being a single dad. I also write a lot about being a single dad at Christmas. Being a dad is about the only thing I’ve been consistently good at. The rest has had its peaks and valleys. When my daughter was little, Christmas was easier. I guess that’s true of all kids. They are so overwhelmed by the lights, and sounds, and stories and anticipation, that they care little about what’s actually under the tree.

Then they get a bit older and they start getting specific and they start remembering the light displays we saw last year and they want to see something knew.

But they still become mesmerized by the wonder, and they still get excited, and they still sing the carols and open the doors of the little cardboard Advent calendar, and they still sit on Santa’s knee and whisper their wish-list into his ear.

Then the day comes when they hit the pause button in their believing. They know the “truth” about Santa, and they are a little too cool to sing carols in the car while we travel, and they don’t find intrigue in what lies behind the doors of the Advent calendar.

I remember that Christmas. My daughter was ten, and I was homeless. She found out I was sleeping in my car about a month before Christmas and she was worried about me. I asked her if she wanted to get the Advent calendars again and she said, “Not this year.” Later I would find out that it was because I no longer had a kitchen counter and she didn’t know where I’d keep it. (That’s where we always placed it) She also informed me that her cousins had told her all about Santa, and a Christmas that was already damaged and taking on water, bottomed out on the rocks right then and there.

That was Christmas 2009. Like I did so often during the six years I battled back from homelessness, I wrote my way out of the pain and sadness that I was feeling. I wrote an Advent series on my blog back then, the stories reflected where I was at the time. My little girl was not so little now and the wonderful traditions we celebrated were gone forever. I always knew she’d figure Santa out…all kids do. But I’d hoped that we would always have the Advent calendar.

The Advent helps us break down the Christmas season from one enormous, glorious, history changing event, to a month of observance, reminders, traditions. It slows down each day as we pause to reflect on the scene behind each door. For me, it lives up to its meaning by building the anticipation of Christ’s coming on that morning in Bethlehem.

It extends Christmas into a month-long time of reflection.

Being a single dad at Christmas changes with the times. I have to adapt each year to whether she’ll be with me, where she is emotionally, and where she is in her celebration of the season. And sometimes –like this year—I have to adjust to not being with her at all on Christmas.

Her mom is not a Christmas person and Daisy has typically desired to spend the holiday with me because I am just the opposite. In my world, there aren’t quite enough lights, not enough Christmas music on the radio, and you can’t watch “Charlie Brown Christmas” too frequently. My daughter is cut from that cloth and would prefer to celebrate and decorate until she plopped over from fatigue. But she also misses her mom, or at least what she wishes she had with her mom. So, this year she is going to Tennessee while I go to Philadelphia to be with family.

That’s the toughest part of being a single dad at Christmas. It’s not being alone, because I’ll have family and friends and won’t spend very much time at all by myself. It’s being without her. She’s all the immediate family I have left, and I feel an emptiness inside when I spend special moments without her.

The day will come when she marries and has children and becomes a believer in Christmas again. There is something about being a parent at Christmas that makes you also a child at Christmas. The wonder in their eyes becomes your wonder all over again, and even though you know you’re “Santa,” you still wonder what he brought your children each year and you’re almost surprised. Each time you tell a Christmas story to your child, you become a child again yourself. 

So, I wait for those days to begin. Daisy is only 19 and has goals that don’t include children anytime soon, but one day I’ll be the grandad coming to visit, and I’ll become a believer yet again, as my child gets caught up in the same wonder I was when she was little. Until then, this year, I’ll go it alone.

Advent Day 6: Over the River and Through the Woods

“I’ll be Home for Christmas” It’s one of the top five best-selling Christmas songs of all time. The title for this article is also a Christmas song and bespeaks the journey home at Christmas. The list goes on.

At Christmas, we find ourselves drawn to our homes. I have wondered about this. Perhaps it’s because Christmas itself began with a journey home for Mary and Joseph. They were ordered by Quirinius to return to their native city for the census. Both of them being descendants of David, they went to Bethlehem, the City of David, to register. It was here that Jesus was born, to fulfill prophecy.

They travelled home.

This past November 15^th marked twenty years since I left home. I had an unhappy wife who hated the Philadelphia area, where I am from. (She is from Utah) and so we moved to Nashville, TN, where I soon discovered that it was really just me that she hated. My daughter was born there. I had my biggest successes and suffered my greatest losses there. We moved here to Virginia three and a half years ago. Having been homeless for the last six years in TN, this is infinitely better. But it is not home.

Home is flat. Home has a funny accent. Home has Hoagies and Tastykake, and the Iggles. Home has a distinct “attytude” that people not from there don’t easily grasp.

But home has the light display at Wannamaker’s (Lord and Taylor). Home has the Christmas Village, and the lights on Boathouse Row, and Termini brother’s bakery on Christmas Eve, closing up shop and selling sugar plums.

Home is the Claymont Fire Company driving slowly through the neighborhoods one evening just before Christmas, with Santa on the back of the pumper, lights flashing as Santa tosses candy canes to wide-eyed children.

Home is Pierre Robert on WMMR playing Alan Mann’s “Christmas on the Block” and making me cry because I know the backstory to that song.

Home is my grandmother’s old house in Philadelphia, right next to the airport. I don’t know who owns it now, but I drive past it when I’m home at Christmas and I remember my first Christmases there. My Lionel train underneath the tree. My stocking hung on the bannister. (I still have my first-ever Christmas stocking) I remember my grandmother’s dining room and the big table and the leaf-shaped candy dish she kept out with jelly spearmint leaves in it.

Home used to be the monorail that circled the enormous toy department at Wannamaker’s in Center City, my brother, my cousin and I would ride along while our parents shopped below.

Home is the Mummer’s Parade.

Home is “Christmas in the Country” at the first church I ever attended. The annual Christmas play they did for so many years (maybe they still do?) Dave Rambo played the role of the father and his voice was distinctive and when I heard him recite the opening lines, I knew it was Christmas once again.

Home was sharing Christmas with my best friend. Home was Christmas carols on the block where I grew up…in a time when kids were unashamed to walk down their street and sing them.

Home was neighbors dropping by unannounced, but not unexpected. And certainly not unloved.

Home was lying in bed all night, literally all night, unable to sleep, waiting for Santa.

Home was that time during each year when my family called a truce and got along for a few weeks each Christmas. Home was a parade of family and friends on Christmas Eve; each time the door opened it brought a welcomed face, and a fresh breeze of light and happiness blew in with them, replacing –if only for a moment- the stale air of dread that we breathed for the remaining eleven months.

Home is not here. It never has been. In the twenty years I’ve been gone, I have gone home at Christmas all but maybe four of them.

I’ll go home again this year. Daisy is going to Tennessee to see her mom this year, so even this trip home won’t feel as much home as it should.

But it will be home, nonetheless.

No other time during the year calls us home like Christmas does. Home is where the heart is, they say, and my heart has been lost on an open sea for so long now. But each year, my heart finds its way to that safe port. To familiar faces and sights and sounds and smells and traditions.

Those things were supposed to have been here with me by now, but that didn’t come to be. Instead, I’ll journey home once again, as Joseph and Mary did. Not to be counted in a census, but to be counted as family, as beloved, as missed if I didn’t show up.

And until this very moment, writing that last line, I didn’t realize why I go home each year. Home is where your heat is…and where your heart is missed.

Buon Natale